Profile - 06/01/2007

Joshua Rozenberg profiles Lady Elizabeth Butler-Sloss. In the legal world, she has not been afraid to be the odd one out. Back in the 1960s as a mother of three - in a very male domain - she set up and ran the first nursery for toddlers in the basement of the Inner Temple. But Lady Butler-Sloss had not taken the usual path to legal eminence. She never went to university. Instead, she took a secretarial course and then worked her way up to the top of the judiciary becoming the first woman Justice of the Court of Appeal. Next week, she comes out of retirement to preside over the inquest into the deaths of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed.